The media narrative on the Cosco Busan oil spill into San Francisco Bay has largely focused on piteous waterfowl and incompetence on the part of the ship's crew, the Coast Guard, and the slow response of disaster relief efforts. But today, Jonathan Curiel of the San Francisco Chronicle gets down to business with the old stand-by of the media, the poor suffering disproportionately.

Two days after the Cosco Busan spilled 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel into San Francisco Bay, Khamnoi Vilaikam grabbed his fishing poles and drove to one of his favorite spots: a shoreline minutes away from his home in Richmond. [....]

Only when Vilaikam returned home that Friday night, and he and a son had eaten some of the fish they had caught, did Vilaikam watch a TV newscast and realize the bay was polluted by oil that killed birds, shut down beaches and prompted state officials to consider a ban on bay fishing.

Vilaikam, one of scores of subsistence fishers in the Bay Area, hasn't fished in the bay since.

"I got fish - striper bass," said Vilaikam. "The fish was OK. We come and eat. After that, they said it was an oil spill. After that, we didn't go."

Subsistence fishers - low-income anglers often from immigrant communities - rely on their catches to feed themselves and their family. On a single outing, Vilaikam can take in more than 30 fish - enough to last him, his wife and their three children for a week.